ARCHITECTS OF THE WEST KINGDOM (2018)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-5	60-80 mins	S J Macdonald Shem Phillips	Garphill Games

In the first of the West Kingdom Trilogy, players are building landmarks to impress the king.

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If you’ve played enough North Sea / West Kingdom / South Tigris games, then the symbols and components will immediately be familiar, and this is something I love about this series of games. There’s a comfort to coming back to each of these games.

But at the same time each game is its own thing, and plays its own tricks when it comes to its mechanics.

For Architects, it’s all about mass Worker Placement. While you are limited to the number of Workers you have, I can’t think of any other game that starts you with 20!

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What I like about this implementation is the various shared spots that you can add your own Workers to that increase your rewards.

For example, the first Worker in a spot gives you 1 Wood. But if you go back on a later turn, that previous guy is still working away, so you get 2 Wood.

To stop this getting out of control for players, there is the Town Centre where you round up a rival’s Workers from a spot and place them in the Guardhouse to hinder them.

Yes, this game has a fair bit of player interaction. Not only are you trying to be the best Architect, you are also trying to kick, trip, and trouble your rivals along the way.

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In the end though, this can become a race to complete that Cathedral. And at low player counts that vicious interaction goes away as you just grab all the resources you can before your opponent.

Few spots can be blocked, so it’s calculating the quickest way to grab what you need. Or wasting your turn to hinder the other player.

At four you can rely on other players to step in and deal with whoever is ahead instead of it always being down to you.

Architects is far from being a bad game. If your player count is low, it doesn’t shine with what it can do, but get a 4-player game going and enjoy the squabbles and backstabbing.